when it is apparent to all that, granting the theory of this World-spirit's development, the phases were not such as Hegel declares them to have been;-although we are aware of all this, yet is the book so ingenious that it seems almost unfair to reduce it to such a caput mortuum as our analysis. Nevertheless the principles of his philosophy of History are those we have given above. The application of those principles to the explication of the various events of History is still more ingenious.

Hegel's Philosophy of Religion has in the last few years been the subject of bitter disputes. The schisms of the young Hegelians the doctrine of Strauss, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and others being all deduced, or pretended to be deduced, from Hegel's system, much angry discussion has taken place as to the real significance of that system. When doctors thus disagree we shall not presume to decide. We will leave the matter to theologians; and for the present only notice Hegel's fundamental ideas.

It is often a matter of wonder to see how Hegel's Method is applied to all subjects, and how his theory of life can be brought to explain every product of life. This is doubtless a great logical merit; and it inspires disciples with boundless confidence. Few, however, we suspect, have approached the subject of Religion without some misgivings as to the applicability of the Method to explain it. Probably the triumph is great when the applicability is shown to be as perfect here as elsewhere. Of this our readers shall judge.

Hegel of course accepts the Trinity; his whole system is Trinitarian. God the Father is the eternal Idee an und für sich that is to say, the Idee as an unconditioned Abstraction. God the Son, engendered by the Father, is the Idee as Anderssein: that is to say, as a conditioned Reality. The separation has taken place which, by means of a negation, gives the Abstraction real existence. God the Holy Ghost is the Identity of the two; the negation of the negation and perfect totality of existence. He is the Consciousness of himself as Spirit: this is the condition of his existence.

God the Father was before the World, and created it. That is to say, he existed an sich, as the pure Idee, before he assumed any reality. He created the World, because it is the essence of his being to create (es gehört zu seinem Sein, Wesen, Schöpfer zu sein). Did he not create, then would his own existence be incomplete.

The vulgar notion of theologians is that God created the world by an act; but Hegel says that the creation is not an act, but an eternal moment,-not a thing done, but a thing perpetually doing;-God did not create the world, he is eternally creating it. Attached also to this vulgar notion, is another less precisely but more commonly entertained; namely, that God, having created the world by an act of his will, lets it develope itself with no interference of his; as Goethe somewhere ridicules it, he sits aloft seeing the world go.' This was not the doctrine of St. Paul, whose pregnant words are, 'In him we live, and move, and have our being.' We live in God, not out of him, not simply by him. And this is what Hegel means when he denies that the creation was a single act. Creation was, and is, and ever will be. Creation is the reality of God: it is God passing into activity, but neither suspended nor exhausted in the act.

This is all that we can here give of his Philosophy of Reli gion; were we to venture further, we should only get ourselves entangled in the thorny labyrinth of theological problems. Let us pass therefore to his History of Philosophy, which, according to him, is the history of the development of the Idee as intelligence. This development of thought is nothing more than the various transitions which constitute the moments of the absolute Method. All these moments are represented in history; so that the History of Philosophy is the reproduction of the Logic under the forms of intelligence. The succession of these moments gives to each period a particular philosophy; but these various philosophies are, in truth, only parts of the one philosophy. This looks like the Eclecticism of Victor Cousin; and indeed Cousin's system is but an awkward imitation of Hegel: but the Frenchman has either misunderstood, or has modified, the views of his master.

Historically speaking, there have been, according to Hegel, but two philosophies-that of Greece and that of Germany. The Greeks conceived Thought under the form of the Idee; the moderns have conceived it under the form of Spirit. The Greeks of Alexandria arrived at unity; but their unity was only ideal, it existed objectively in thought. The subjective aspect was wanting: the totality knew itself not as subjective and objective. This is the triumph of modern philosophy.

The moments have been briefly these:-1. With Thales and the Eleatics, the Idee was conceived as pure Being: the One. 2. With Plato it was conceived as Universal, Essence, Thought. 3. With Aristotle as Conception (Begriff). 4. With the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, as subjective Conception. 5. With the Alexandrians as the totality of Thought. 6. With Descartes as the Self-Consciousness. 7. With Fichte as the Absolute, or Ego. 8. With Schelling as the Identity of Subject and Object.

We close here our exposition of Hegel's tenets; an exposition which we have been forced to give more in his own words than we could have wished; but the plan we adopted with respect to Kant and Fichte would not have been so easy (we doubt if it be possible) with respect to Hegel, whose language must be learned, for the majority of his distinctions are only verbal. In Kant and Fichte the thoughts had to be grappled with; in Hegel the form is everything.

Those

We have only touched upon essential points. desirous of more intimate acquaintance with the system are referred to the admirable edition of his complete works, published by his disciples, in twelve volumes, octavo. If this voluminousness be somewhat too alarming, we can recommend the abridgment by Franz and Hillert, where the whole system is given in Hegel's own words, and only his illustrations and minute details are omitted. Michelet's work indicates the various directions taken by Hegel's disciples. Chalybäus is popular, but touches only on a * HEGEL'S Philosophie in wörtlichen Auszügen, Berlin, 1843.

1837.

MICHELET: Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, 2 vols.

few points.* Barchou de Penhoen evidently knows Hegel only at second-hand, and is not to be trusted.† Dr. Ott's work is ill-written, but is very useful as an introduction to the study of the works themselves. No work of Hegel's has been translated into English ;§ and only his Aesthetik into French, and that is more an analysis, we believe, than a translation.

* CHALYBÄUS: Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, 3. Aufl. 1843.

† BARCHOU DE PENHOEN: Histoire de la Philosophie allemande, 2 vols. 1836. OTT: Hegel et la Philosophie allemande, 1844. The best work on German Philosophy known to me is WILM's Histoire de la Philosophie allemande, 4 vols. 1846-9.

§ Since this was written, a part of the Logic has appeared under this title,- The Subjective Logic of Hegel, translated by H. SLOMAN and J. WALLON, 1855, and Mr. SIBREE has admirably rendered the Philosophy of History. An attempt to introduce HEGEL to the English public has been made in Mr. J. H. STIRLING'S Secret of Hegel, 2 vols. 1865, which contains a translation of the chief parts of the Logic, with a commentary.

557

ELEVENTH EPOCH.

Foundation of the Positive Philosophy.

A

CHAPTER I.

AUGUSTE COMTE*

§ 1. HIS LIFE.

UGUSTE COMTE was born at Montpellier on the 19th

of January, 1798, in a modest house still to be seen facing the church of St. Eulalie. His father was treasurer of taxes for the department of Hérault. Both father and mother were strict Catholics and ardent royalists; but any influence they may have exercised over the direction of their son's thoughts was considerably neutralised by his own insurgent disposition on the one hand, and by his early education on the other. He was not docile to authority; though in after life he strenuously preached the virtue of docility. At the age of nine he became a boarder in the Montpellier Lycée; and there quickly distinguished himself by his ardour in study and by his resistance to discipline. Small and delicate in frame, loved by his comrades although he seldom joined in their sports, full of veneration for his professors, he was intractable, tiresome, and argumentative with his masters; those who could teach him found him docile; those who had to restrain him found him rebellious. His professors praised, his masters punished him.

* The sources of this biographical sketch have been LITTRÉ: Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive, 1863; ROBINET: Notice sur Euvre et sur la Vie d'Auguste Comte, 1860; and personal knowledge.